Boston Museum Returns Looted 2,700-Year-Old Necklace to Turkey

An ancient gold and carnelian necklace looted nearly half a century ago is finally returning to its rightful home.

The artifact dates to between 550 and 450 B.C.E., and it had been on display at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston for decades. This month, the museum pledged to give up the necklace, which was probably stolen from a Turkish archaeological site in 1976.

The museum acquired the necklace in 1982, according to a statement from the MFA. At that time, officials knew only that it came from Asia Minor, an area that includes modern-day Turkey, and that it was probably found at a gravesite.

“For many years, participants in the art trade really didn’t ask a lot of questions about provenance,” Victoria Reed, the MFA’s senior curator for provenance, tells the Boston Globe’s Julian E.J. Sorapuru. “It’s not unusual in the 1980s for us to have acquired—for any museum to have acquired—something without really probing more deeply into its ownership history. And jewelry in particular is very, very hard to trace.”

A few years ago, a scholar suggested that the MFA review the 2,700-year-old necklace’s provenance. The scholar, who wished to remain anonymous, had noticed similarities between the necklace in Boston and similar jewelry found at Bintepeler, an archaeological site in western Turkey with over 100 burial mounds.

Archaeologists excavated the Bintepeler artifacts in 1976 following reports of looting in the region. Today, most of those objects are housed at Turkey’s archaeological museum of Manisa. When the MFA launched its own investigation, researchers concluded that the necklace may have also come from Bintepeler.

“It seems that the elements that made up our necklace were probably smuggled out of the country and then strung together to form this piece of jewelry,” Reed tells Tammy Mutasa of WBZ-TV, a local TV station. “We always try to return [artifacts to] their rightful owner, whether that owner is an individual or a community or a nation.”

Phoebe Segal, the MFA’s senior curator of ancient Greek and Roman art, tells the Boston Globe that other clues pointed researchers in the right direction. For instance, the necklace is unusually short, measuring only eight inches.

“I think if we were approaching this now, we would say, ‘Why is this necklace so small?’” Segal adds.

In recent years, museums, cultural institutions and collectors have faced mounting pressure to repatriate stolen artifacts to their countries of origin. Earlier this month, a collector challenged the Manhattan district attorney’s office’s attempt to seize an artifact that may have been stolen from Turkey in the 1960s.

Meanwhile, museums like the MFA have been actively collaborating with cultural heritage officials from other countries on repatriation efforts.

“The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, together with its institutional and academic partners, is making great efforts to protect and restore Turkey's cultural heritage,” says Hilal Demirel, attaché for cultural affairs and promotion at the Turkish culture ministry, per Artnet’s Jo Lawson-Tancred. “The return of an object that was illegally removed from Turkey is a symbolic moment that sends a strong message to the world, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation in the protection of cultural heritage.”

Julia Binswanger | READ MORE

Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.